Week 1
Date
September 15, 2016
Area
Mexico MTC
Companion
Elder Davis
Week 1
Mom and Dad,
You can call me whatever you want! I´m kinda your son after all. 😀 There is a way to send me letters during the week, called Dear Elder. You email the MTC (CCM in Spanish. Centro de Capatacion Misionales Mexico) somehow and they print out the emails and they get delivered to us every day. P-day is Thursday for me, so that´s when I´ll be writing home. Wow you sent me a ton of questions to answer! :) My favorite thing so far has been the practice teaching we do each night. Our evening teacher, Hermano Alverez, has a character named Pablo who we teach. Even though my companions and I (I have two companions!!! One went home yesterday) don´t know how to conjugate in Spanish yet, as we teach by the Spirit we are able to get the message of God across. My first companion is Elder Davis, and he is from Georgia. My second companion is Elder McKell, from Spanish Fork Utah. We are all serving in the Oregon Salem Mission!! Its so crazy how that worked out.
The tag feels so incredibly amazing, and its hard to believe that I am a representative of Jesus Christ with the right, authority, and power to preach in His name, saying what he would say if He was teaching our investigators. I have learned so much Spanish in the first week, that its hilarious to look back on the three years of high school and realize how little I learned there. Since last Tuesday, I have memorized 210 basic core Spanish words, the First Vision, Moroni 10:5, and James 1:5 all in Spanish! The Gift of Tongues is real and I know especially powerful with us missionaries. Elder Cook told us in a worldwide missionary MTC devotional that we have been called to speak the language in which we can bear the strongest testimony, so the last thing that worries me is learning Spanish! I am so excited to continue to further my knowledge in the language and in the gospel. The big joke in my district has been we have no idea how to teach the gospel in English, since all of our teaching up until this point has been completely in Spanish. We added up the numbers, and each day we spend 15 hours learning or teaching in Spanish, and the missionaries at the CCM learn about twice as much as the missionaries at the MTC. :D
The food here is actually really good! Its all Mexican food, but nothing is actually spicy unless you add sauces to it, so I´m surviving, :) We live in casas, or houses, and there are four rooms per casa, and four Elders per room. Two rooms in our casa are Latin Elders, and we met them the third day when we had a testimony meeting with them. One of the missionaries, Elder Casanova, promised us that if we exercised faith in Jesus Christ and read daily from our scriptures in Spanish, in addition to doing all the language training asked of us, that we would speak perfect Spanish in the field. In addition to his powerful promise, we as a district gave every person a blessing of comfort and knowledge to learn Spanish. I know I´ve said it already, but I am so excited to keep learning Spanish!! :)
I miss you and Dad, Ellie, and Mason so very much, yet I know there is nowhere else I should be right now then here. I know that the next 103 weeks will be really tough, but one, my mission is my priesthood calling, and two, the people of Salem Oregon need me more than you guys do right now. I know that´s hard to believe, but its true. I love you all! I´m not quite sure how to plug the USB to the computer, so I´ll have to send tons of pictures next week. Know that I am loving it and have an amazing experience. The hardest part is definitely being away from you all, but I know its going to be so worth it, and many blessings will come from this. I love you guys so much, and I hope everything is going so well for you! I´ll talk to you more next week!
Love,
Elder Kehl
You can call me whatever you want! I´m kinda your son after all. 😀 There is a way to send me letters during the week, called Dear Elder. You email the MTC (CCM in Spanish. Centro de Capatacion Misionales Mexico) somehow and they print out the emails and they get delivered to us every day. P-day is Thursday for me, so that´s when I´ll be writing home. Wow you sent me a ton of questions to answer! :) My favorite thing so far has been the practice teaching we do each night. Our evening teacher, Hermano Alverez, has a character named Pablo who we teach. Even though my companions and I (I have two companions!!! One went home yesterday) don´t know how to conjugate in Spanish yet, as we teach by the Spirit we are able to get the message of God across. My first companion is Elder Davis, and he is from Georgia. My second companion is Elder McKell, from Spanish Fork Utah. We are all serving in the Oregon Salem Mission!! Its so crazy how that worked out.
The tag feels so incredibly amazing, and its hard to believe that I am a representative of Jesus Christ with the right, authority, and power to preach in His name, saying what he would say if He was teaching our investigators. I have learned so much Spanish in the first week, that its hilarious to look back on the three years of high school and realize how little I learned there. Since last Tuesday, I have memorized 210 basic core Spanish words, the First Vision, Moroni 10:5, and James 1:5 all in Spanish! The Gift of Tongues is real and I know especially powerful with us missionaries. Elder Cook told us in a worldwide missionary MTC devotional that we have been called to speak the language in which we can bear the strongest testimony, so the last thing that worries me is learning Spanish! I am so excited to continue to further my knowledge in the language and in the gospel. The big joke in my district has been we have no idea how to teach the gospel in English, since all of our teaching up until this point has been completely in Spanish. We added up the numbers, and each day we spend 15 hours learning or teaching in Spanish, and the missionaries at the CCM learn about twice as much as the missionaries at the MTC. :D
The food here is actually really good! Its all Mexican food, but nothing is actually spicy unless you add sauces to it, so I´m surviving, :) We live in casas, or houses, and there are four rooms per casa, and four Elders per room. Two rooms in our casa are Latin Elders, and we met them the third day when we had a testimony meeting with them. One of the missionaries, Elder Casanova, promised us that if we exercised faith in Jesus Christ and read daily from our scriptures in Spanish, in addition to doing all the language training asked of us, that we would speak perfect Spanish in the field. In addition to his powerful promise, we as a district gave every person a blessing of comfort and knowledge to learn Spanish. I know I´ve said it already, but I am so excited to keep learning Spanish!! :)
I miss you and Dad, Ellie, and Mason so very much, yet I know there is nowhere else I should be right now then here. I know that the next 103 weeks will be really tough, but one, my mission is my priesthood calling, and two, the people of Salem Oregon need me more than you guys do right now. I know that´s hard to believe, but its true. I love you all! I´m not quite sure how to plug the USB to the computer, so I´ll have to send tons of pictures next week. Know that I am loving it and have an amazing experience. The hardest part is definitely being away from you all, but I know its going to be so worth it, and many blessings will come from this. I love you guys so much, and I hope everything is going so well for you! I´ll talk to you more next week!
Love,
Elder Kehl
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